


Sad Angels

by LaryssaD17



Series: Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted if the Father of Understanding Guides Us [3]
Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Angst and More Angst, Asshole Henry Green, Bad Luck, Bartender Agnes, Depressed Arno Dorian, Did I Mention Angst?, F/M, Fluff and Angst, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I think I did not mention angst, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Lawyer Evie, Love issues - Freeform, More angst, Private Detective Arno, Pub Owner Jacob, Sad Evie Frye, Strangers to Lovers, Strong Language, lot of swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:41:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23537794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaryssaD17/pseuds/LaryssaD17
Summary: Two broken angels met one night and save each other from themselves.Or: Evie is heartbroken because of Henry and Arno is casually there to help.
Relationships: Arno Dorian & Evie Frye, Arno Dorian/Evie Frye
Series: Nothing is True, Everything is Permitted if the Father of Understanding Guides Us [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1685434
Kudos: 6





	Sad Angels

**Author's Note:**

> English is not my thing but at least, I tried. Thanks to the ones reading this. It means a lot.

Love has always been a sour taste on Evie’s mouth. She is, indeed, a beautiful woman with a I-don’t-necessary-need-a-man attitude and a genuine desire to help others, but since very little, love has been a complicated thing for her. 

Love was the thing that made her, and her twin brother come to the world, but was also love what made her father’s life kind of miserable and her education about feelings really strict. She was educated with the phrase of ‘Don’t let personal feelings comprise the mission’ and for Evie ‘personal feelings’ meant love. So, she grew up thinking love was some kind of weakness, a thing she had to avoid like the plague, something she couldn’t let took control of her life and actions. That was what her father, may God rest his soul, teach her and for a few years she believes it. She thought that being emotional about something or having feelings for someone was bad, that she could help people and achieve her dreams without making attachments but then she met him, and all went to shit pretty fast. 

The first thing she thought about him was that he was sweet and nice, and that he was, indeed, different in every perspective to other men she had met before. She falls for him, faster that she would like to admit, and when Jacob stars teasing and he appears to feel something for her too she thinks she could try, at least for once, to love someone and be loved back. To try to let someone else than her brother enters her little bubble of dreams, personal thoughts and desires. She does that and for three years she thinks is the better decision she have ever made. Evie feels really happy by his side, she feels understood because they shared some passions and ideas. But they also had some differences, the kind that can make a civilized conversation explode in a heated argument in a matter of moments or the differences where the heart feels tired after the same shit over and over again. 

So those three wonderful years turn into a horrible routine filled with the same excuses, same arguments and conversations. She felt like they were two strangers sharing a flat in the middle of London and when she notices and her heart stars to hurt, she tries to fix it, because it is what she does. She tried to fix what they had. Hell, she did. Evie didn’t want it to end because she really loved (loves) him, but apparently, he did not. Henry didn’t want it to fix it. He doesn’t love her anymore, or at least he doesn’t feel the same anymore like he clearly said that god-awful night. 

Henry leaves her, like her mother left her father and then Evie understood why she couldn’t let love rule her life. It was too powerful, it hurtled too much. She cried, she felt pain, she didn’t know what to do with a broken heart, but thanks to Jacob, Clara, Kassandra and other friends she has in the law firm she works at, she moved on. Or at least that’s what the others think, because reality is that she’s still hurting inside. 

Evie smiles to her friends, to her family, to her clients, but her heart is still broken (even if a year had passed since their break up) and when someone else tries to get too close, she rejects it really fast so nothing bad can happen again. Evie is hurting, but she has always been good at hiding things, so no one appears to notice. Until he arrives. Another handsome, perfect, unique and mysterious man who appears from the nothing to save her, like an angel from Heaven. 

***

Arno didn’t liked to go out of his comfort zone, but then again he helps people, so when Frederick Abberline calls him from London saying that he needs help capturing a rich and powerful sod (and him doing some illegal things) he can’t say no because he owns him one and he doesn’t like to have debts with people. So, he takes a god-awful plane with just a backpack as luggage and when he knows the details he starts working because he doesn’t like to lose time. In a couple of days, he has done the illegal things Abberline wanted him to do and he have collected the necessary information to put the rich imbecile in prison. Because Abberline is a busy and important bastard, they agree to meet Wednesday night in a local pub called Bertha’s, who was supposed to be owned by one of Abberline’s friends. Arno didn’t really care, he just wanted to give him what he founded and go back to Paris so he could drink in his flat until he couldn’t remember shit. 

His plans were screwed, like always, because he wasn’t there when he arrived and according to the miss named Agnes behind the counter, he wasn’t going to arrive soon, so, he decided to order a beer and wait, even if he didn’t fucking like the idea. He sited far away from the counter, in a dark corner, but in a place, he could still see who entered and exit the pub. After she delivered him the beer, he putted his feet in the table and started to fidget with his father’s watch. 

He started to think about a lot of things. About his disastrous life, about his bad luck, about her. 

Arno knew, since he was little, that love wasn’t going to do good in his life because everyone he loves abandons him. His mother left when he was little, his father died in a terrible accident that not even him, one of the best private detectives in France, can prove was more of a murder than an accident and then he’s adopting father, a rich man that didn’t have to take him, but did it either way, dies and he is convinced that he may be a disease. But maybe the greatest prove that love sucks and is not for him it’s her. 

Élise. 

She was everything for him. She made him see life with another light, with a positive and beautiful one. She made him happy, she supported him and stayed when he needed someone the most, when he thought he was alone because everyone he loved were gone. But then, one dark night, she was gone too. She died in his arms, and with her the little light he had inside himself. After that he considered himself a bad luck charm, a person who carried disgrace and sadness. So, he decided to be a policeman to find the murders of his beloved and the fathers he had. He did catch Élise murderer before they expel him for ‘bad behavior’ and now is a walking disaster that people knew as a private detective with alcoholism and attachment issues but a well know reputation and a thing with helping hopeless people like him.

His train of thought about his misery and drinking from his beer is abruptly interrupted when the door opens, and a young woman enters. He froze when he sees her and the watch in his hand almost drops. 

He’s mesmerized in an instant without knowing why. 

The bartender greets her when she enters, saying something like, ‘Hello, miss Frye’ and she responds with a tired and small smile. A smile that he somehow associates with sadness. She says something about seeing someone and then walks to a table close to the door and close to a group of men with green jackets that greet her too with the same respect. He tries to not look, but he can’t stop himself because she sits facing him in her table across the place and the pub’s orange lights hanging from the celling made her look like a total angel, a sad and beautiful angel. 

She’s wearing elegant clothes, like she’s some kind of businesswoman or lawyer (he personally thinks the second suits her better), with her hair updo in an elegant hairstyle that a few hairs don’t want to follow. Her grey eyes keep themselves occupied with the night view the widow to her right offers and her freckles somehow sparkle under the orange lights. Arno decides, then and there, that she’s beautiful. Maybe one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen, but then he stops himself from staring and thinking so foolishly because he’s acting like a hormonal teen. But still he can’t stop thinking that she appears sad and tired. He wonders, then, if she had a bad day at work or if she’s simply heartbroken. He believes is the second, because he knows when broken and strange things appear. 

The bartender brings her a beer and they chat a little, until she’s alone in the table again with her hands around the bottle. He decides to stare to the watch in his hands when he feels her looking his way. He’s kind of embarrassed, but if he was good in something, it was in hiding. Arno doesn’t look at her back, swallows pretty hard and entertains himself trying to put the correct hour in that old silver watch. She stops staring a few seconds after beginning and he feels kind of relived and prays to whoever oversees the universe to end is waiting soon. Of course, he’s prays are not responded and he ends up his beer without Abberline been there. 

He was sited back in his chair, thinking of been in home when the door opens again. He looks, thinking is that bastard of Abberline, but he is mistaken because a man with Indian factions appears instead. Agnes greets him, but not with the same enthusiasm that she did with ‘miss Frye’. The man doesn’t order anything and once he sees the beautiful angel, he walks to her and they exchange a few uncomfortable words before sitting. Arno starts thinking that something is off there. The angel’s facial expression is kind of solid, like someone who’s hiding something, but Arno can still see that sadness. It was almost like the man in front of her hurtled her and she was trying to hide it, even when it was still hurting. He admires her in that moment but feels like he should be doing something. He knew what hurting felt like and he didn’t like to see people feeling the same. 

‘It’s not of your god-dam business, Arno’ he says to himself in his head and says to Agnes to bring another bottle of beer. He decides to play Temple Run in his phone to keep the appearances, but he was trying really hard to listen to what they were talking, because, judging by her face and Agnes’ it was not a good thing. But then he’s interrupted with the door’s bell and finally Abberline enters. The bartender greets him and points to Arno, who’s standing while the policeman approaches. 

“I apologize for the wait. I had to help this pub’s owner and some of his gang members out of jail again”, Abberline says while they shake hands. 

“It doesn’t matter. The beer is good in here”, he responds, and both sit. 

“Did you find something useful so we can put that bastard in jail?”, Arno nods and is about to fetch the flash drive where he had all the info in his coat’s pocket when they hear someone speaking in hushed whispers (clearly not that hushed) behind Abberline. Both men look to the noise source and found that is the beautiful lady and the other man. Arno frowns sensing trouble but then the angel apologizes and Abberline turns around again with a suspicious look. Arno does the same but feeling that something bad was going to happened in any moment. 

“Everything I found is here”, the French man says when he puts the flash drive in the table between them. “Bank accounts, business files, photos…everything that proves he’s been involved with those murders and drugs”, 

“God bless you, mate”, said Abberline with a relieved tone while he took the flash drive, “I’ve been following this sod for a few months and his-“, Abberline couldn’t end that sentence, because a really furious words interrupted his. They both stand without thinking and look to the young woman and the man. She’s in the verge of crying and looks like is about to rip his face off. Everyone else in the pub is looking at them and the men with the green jackets were standing too, ready to fight. 

“Evie is everything alright?”, Abberline asks, taking a few steps forward. So, her name is Evie. Arno decides he likes it. She looks at the policeman trying to hold her tears, but instead of answering, she simply takes her things and runs to the door. 

“Evie!”, the other man says, but Abberline stops him before he can go after her. 

“Sorry, Henry but she’s a Frye and we all know is better to leave her alone”, the man who is presumable Henry decides to stay back, but Arno feels the urge to follow her. 

Because, why the hell not? She’s hurting and no one should be hurting alone. He knows that better than anyone.

***

Evie puts her coat on and tries to walk faster while she’s still holding her purse and her tears. She’s so upset and furious. She can’t believe that he asked something like that. Evie is full of anger and sorrow; she wants to punch someone and scream to the top of her lungs because she’s hell of frustrated but the only thing she can do is to stop abruptly in the middle of a cold street. She can’t hold it anymore. She have been hurting for so long and when she thinks she can be in peace with her ex, he comes and tells her he wants her to sell the flat they shared (her fucking flat) so he can return to India. That was it. She exploded. She couldn’t take it anymore. He had taken everything from her. Her heart, her happiness and know he wanted to take her bloody flat. She started crying and sobbing while her body was leaning on a lamppost in the middle of the street. She didn’t care because she was tired of everything, of her ex, of her feelings, of her ‘I’m alright’ façade when she clearly wasn’t. She slides down until her body is sited and the lamppost is supporting her back. Evie doesn’t care about the people looking or passing by. She doesn’t care of anything at all. She just wanted to be happy, to love, to be loved back. Why it was so hard for her? Why? 

She doesn’t know for how much she had been crying when she hears footsteps stopping in front of her. Evie ignores them because she clearly isn’t in the mood but the pair of brown boots, don’t move a centimeter. 

“Go the fuck away”, she says, with a clear rude attitude, but the boots still don’t move. So, she explodes again and looks up, with the head full of insults and blasphemies to the stranger bothering her. But when she sees him, she froze and forgets everything she was about to yell. She recognizes him like the mysterious stranger that was sited in that dark corner in Jacob’s pub when she arrived. The same stranger that made her thought that she wasn’t the only one sad in the place. 

She swallows embarrassed and stands in her feet to look at him. Her face is wet with tears and her eyes blood shot. He looks at her in silence, for a few moments, like he’s waiting for her to say something. She cleans the tears (or at least tries to) with the back of her hand and then sniffs to recuperate some of her dignity. 

“What do you want?”, Evie asks with a rude tone, but she doesn’t care. She’s upset and just wants to go home, maybe get drunk and sleep until noon. 

“I saw what happened and just wanted to know if you were alright but I now know that you are not”, his voice makes her feel something she’s not pretty sure of what is, but she thinks that is his accent, because is really smoothing, like he’s use to speaking low. She looks at him and founds that he’s still staring. 

He’s a little taller that her, with messy brown hair tied in a ponytail and a beard of a few days. He has a scar in his left cheek and his dark blue coat is kind of dirty and worn-out, but stills gives him a mystery vibe that caught her attention when she saw him staring from across the pub. Evie’s first thought when she saw him in the pub was that he was kind of out of place, like he wasn’t from around, but now that she looks at him under the lamppost’s light, he looks like an angel. A handsome angel with sad eyes and broken wings that came to save her from herself. He resist her sad eyes from a reasonable distant, waiting for her to say something, but all she can think about is that he is there, he follow her from the pub when Henry should have done it, that he should be the one in front of her, but no. In his place was a stranger who was looking at her like he didn’t liked seen her in tears and with such soft eyes that were making her feel guilty for being rude at him. 

“I’m alright”, she says looking down and he rolls his eyes because that is the stupidest lie, he has ever heard in his life, “I’m just upset”. 

“I can see that”, he says with his soft accent and she wants to cry again, “Use this”, when she looks at him again, he’s holding a handkerchief, “It’s not ice-cream, but it’s going to help with the tears”, she takes it and use it to dry the tears that are rolling across her face.

“Thanks, stranger”, she says, with a cracked voice after sniffing. 

“Arno Dorian”, he corrects her, “And your welcome”, she looks at him again and thinks that maybe his name sounds too good in her head. He looks at the street and Evie secretly wish he doesn’t have to go because she doesn’t want to be alone again. “Can you go home on your own?”, she’s about to insult him for that, because he clearly doesn’t know that she grew up with a gang in the city, but she doesn’t because he’s being nice, and no stranger has been like that. 

“I’m okay. It’s just that…I give him everything I have, everything I am and he pays me with his stupidity and I’m fucking mad because I don’t know what else to do to get him out of my bloody life and I’m tired…I’m fucking tired…”, she says with a furious and sad tone while she sits under the lamppost again while a new wave of fresh tears escape her eyes. Arno swallows thinking that he was right in deducing she was broken and hurting and for once, he hated to be right on something. He looks at her with sad eyes, thinking he can’t leave her in there all alone, while her heart is hurting and she’s vulnerable. It’s not a gentlemanly act and he will not forgive himself if another bad thing happens to that sad angel. 

So, against his better judgment, he sits beside her under the lamppost. If she is surprised, she doesn’t show it and he’s grateful because he’s a private detective and not a psychologist, but he’s still going to try. 

“I think is alright that you’re tired of his shit”, Arno doesn’t have idea why he’s is so sure of what he’s saying, “If he doesn’t appreciates your love and just wants to ruin your life then you’re in all your right to tell him to fuck the hell off because men like that are the worst and is not worth it”, Arno looks in her direction and finds her already looking at him.  
Evie is kind of surprised by his words and Arno himself is too, but she doesn’t say anything, they simply stay a few seconds looking at each other. 

“I thought he loved me. I think he did, in some way, but then, when things got sour, I tried to fix it and apparently he did not want and…”, she stops and uses the handkerchief to dry her tears again. “And now the only one who’s broken is me and I think is not fair. I wanted to prove to my dead father that loving someone was worth it that it wasn’t that bad like he thought me, but then it turns out he’s bloody right and that I should’ve listened from the beginning”, Arno stops looking at her when she mentions her dead father because he can’t stop himself from thinking of his. They then have another thing in common and he wished it wasn’t that. 

“This shit fucking hurts, and he looks like he’s not hurting. And it’s not bloody fair because I just wanted to love someone and to be loved and he did not fucking love me at all”, she is sobbing again, hiding her face in her hands and trying to stop the tears with no success. 

He looks at her and he can feel everything because he was in her place once. Not in the same circumstances, but he still felt that pressure in his chest, the failure in hiding the tears and the sobbing, the hurting and all that shit that made him the disaster he is now. So, he decides that she needs his help, because when he was in her place someone help him, and he didn’t want to leave her alone. 

“Ange”, he says with his low voice and she looks at him with broken and confused grey eyes, “It’s clear, at least for me, that that man is not worth it. It’s not worth to think about him, to waste your energies on him and definitely he isn’t worth of your tears”, Arno slowly and gently takes the handkerchief from her and starts to dry her face while holding her shin with the other hand, “So, please, don’t waste more time on him. Whatever he wanted from you he can go straight to hell with it because you deserve to be happy, and to be loved by someone way better”

Arno doesn’t know from where the fuck he got those words but he’s secretly proud of them. When he finishes cleaning her face, she stopped sobbing and it’s looking at him with wide eyes, full of hope and gratitude like if no one never said to her that she deserved to be loved by someone better. They looked at each other for a few seconds, melting in the gaze of the other while the cold night moved their coats and made them shiver. And then, without warning, she’s coming forward and Arno is too surprised to know what to do, but when she crashes against him in an awkward hug, he can’t stop from letting out a relived breath. He tenses for a moment, because he’s not used to hugs (even if Léon sometimes steals some from him), but when he feels her holding him for dear life, he sees himself slowly wrapping his arms around her. 

Their position is uncomfortable, but they don’t care because they are two sad angels holding each other, helping each other like Hell thought them to. 

They stay like that for a few minutes, until Evie stops crying completely and breaks the hug. They stand again and she dries her tears with her hands while he watches with a small smile how better she feels. When Evie is alright, she looks at him and smiles a little, even if her eyes and nose are red and he is still a stranger. “I appreciate your help and words, mister Dorian”, she says, and he nods feeling a little twist in his stomach because even with a broken voice his name in her lips sounds different and unique. Maybe it was the accent. Yes, the accent. 

“It’s not a problem…”, he silently asks for her name, because even if he already knows, he thinks is better if she just says it. 

“Evie. Evie Frye”, she completes and offers him a hand that he takes in two point five seconds. 

“It’s not a problem then, Evie”, he smiles a little now, something he’s not used to do these days, but does either way because he likes how her name sounds in his mind.  
She swallows while they shake hands and she can’t stop herself from thinking that the way he says her name feels really good to her ears. She smiles, a little happier this time, and then swallows again. 

“Do you have something to do? I would like to thank you for your help. Maybe a beer? Not everyone in here stops to helps a foolish stranger crying for her ex”, he wants to tell her she isn’t foolish for crying but he doesn’t. 

“No, I don’t have anything to do and yes, I would like a beer”, he answers thinking that just a few hours ago he wanted to get the hell out of London and back to Paris as soon as possible. ‘Priorities can change really fast’ he said to himself. 

“Marvelous”, she says with a wide smile. “The pub we were is from my twin brother, Jacob and if Agnes is still there and Henry is not, maybe we can stay a while” 

“Sounds good to me”, and it really does. More that he wants to admit. They start walking again side by side to Bertha’s, in silence. 

Later that night, after a few bottles of beer and a lot of conversations, Evie is pass out in the table in front of him and he just can think that she was still a sad angel. A really beautiful sad ange that he didn’t want to leave alone. 

So, against his better judgment he decides to stay for a little while in London, just for a few more days, until he was sure that she was fine. 

But of course, things are easier said than done.

**Author's Note:**

> According to the internet, ange means Angel in french, so if it's wrong, blame the internet. I don't like this ending too much, but is better than the original one. Hope is good enough.


End file.
